A personal challenge while supporting the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation

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Mt. Kilimanjaro – Week 14: New Goal, Raffle Winners, Training

Fundraising

I am extremely proud of my entire climb team!! Not only have they been training several times a week, but they’ve also been fundraising and coming up with some amazing ideas to raise more funds for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

As of today, our team has collectively raised over $73,000 towards our $75,000 goal!!

Considering we still have over 3 months to fundraise, we want to climb to new heights and try to hit a new goal of $100,000 by October.

We are in search for more corporate donors, and will be holding a few additional fundraisers during the summer months to help push us over the edge. If you have the ability to help by either making a donation, volunteering at one of our events, or helping us secure a corporate donor, please contact me!

Raffle Winners

As promised in the last blog post, I would announce the winners from the fundraising raffle as soon as all winners were contacted. Thank you once again for everyone who donated prizes, purchased tickets, and participated in this fundraising event! I’ve posted a few photos from the draw (which took place during our climb team monthly meeting) and a few photos of our winners below with prize!

Our climb team may hold a final raffle sometime in late August/early September, and I’ll be sure to give you all a heads up.

Ballots for the Air Canada Aeroplan Miles Draw (each ballot outlines the donor, donation amount, and which climber obtained the donation)

Mark & Simon from Charity Challenge draw all of the winners for the raffle draw

Ballots of the raffle draw, sold by each climber!

Jennifer Chang (from the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation) pulled the 3 Air Canada winners from the box

Training

During the last few weeks I’ve updated my training plan to include more cardio exercises. To be honest with you all, I’ve been slacking in the cardio department and really need to pick up the pace (no pun intended!). Two years ago when I was training for the climb, I was already running 3-4 times a week with distances exceeding the 10K mark. In order to have a successful climb, I need to build my cardio back up to those levels and need to focus on deep breathing exercises. Please help encourage me and remind me to go for a run next time you see me. Sometimes I just need that little nudge 😉

While running is very important, I do still need to concentrate on the long weekend hikes. We’ll be bumping up the weekend hike times from 4hrs to 6hrs over the next few weeks. With only 15 weeks of training remaining, completing as many long weekend hikes as possible will also increase our chances of success.

A lot of people have been asking me if I’ll be bringing back the ‘training mask’. Yes, my training mask, which simulates higher altitude, will be coming back in July. For those who are unfamiliar with the mask, during my training 2 years ago, I used an elevation mask which restricted the amount of airflow I could breathe into my lungs.

To begin the mask training I’ll only wear it around the house relaxing on the couch in order to become familiar with the lack of oxygen sensation. Two weeks later, I will start to use it for shorter runs, and hopefully by late August I’ll be using it on runs exceeding 10K.

In next weeks blog I’ll outline some of the additional breathing exercises we’ll need to incorporate into our training, as well as the reasons why we need to prepare our lungs for the higher altitude.

On top of my average daily walks of about 7K, this past week I completed the following: